Brought to you by the attorneys at

With a 60-year heritage, Gallivan, White, & Boyd, P.A. is one of the Southeast’s leading litigation and business law firms. GWB's products liability team has extensive experience in defending a wide variety of products liability claims, including mass tort and catastrophic loss claims, as well as conducting accident investigations and providing strategic advocacy services to our clients. Gallivan, White & Boyd, P.A. has offices in Greenville, S.C., Charleston, S.C., Columbia, S.C., and Charlotte, N.C.

1. The United States Postal Service has announced that it will no longer deliver letters on Saturdays.

2. This, of course, means that letters you would have received on Saturday will now arrive Monday at the earliest, possibly later.

3. The news also means that some letters you deposit into the mail on Fridays may not even be retrieved by the Postal Service until Mondays.

4. Many, if not most, of our state and federal rules of civil procedure contemplate service by mail.

5. Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Procedure contains a provision entitled “Additional Time After Certain Kinds of Service,” otherwise known as “the mailing rule.” As has been noted by other bloggers, this rule “gives lawyers an additional three days if served by mail.”

6. Although the number of days the post office will be delivering letters has decreased, the number of days a lawyer has to respond to items served by mail will remain the same for the time being.

To avoid the issues, I try to enter into an agreement with the other side at the outset of the case to serve documents by email. That has worked out well. When we have to trade large documents, we agree to send a courtesy email saying that the documents are in the mail and should arrive by a certain time,